Welcome to The DevLaunch Podcast, bringing you insights from industry experts on how to grow the digital agency you love. In this episode, I sit down with Max Traylor, the consultant's consultant, to unpack the intricacies of pricing strategies and client relationships. Max Traylor's unique take on why digital agencies need to evolve beyond that tactical work
to secure their spot as strategic partners. Whether you're struggling with the risk of being vendor-fied or you're curious about productizing your services, this conversation offers insights that can reshape how you approach your agency's growth. Well, hey, Max. It's wonderful to have you on the show today. Max, short for Maximus, right? Max Well, yeah, I got the formal treatment.
Oh, okay. Not Max. Max Well. No, there was a Maximus in school and I was always jealous because I was the Max Well, and of course they had to read the full names when they were doing no roll calls. Cut it out. That's way cooler. Well, I mean, I would, I get that. I would understand that. Maximus would be an incredible example. Well, maybe it was Maximilian. No, it was Maximilian or Maximus. I don't know. It was really cool. But yeah, you know, Max Well, formal version, welcome. Robert Max
Well, if you want to get formal about it, I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, it's wonderful to have you on the show. You are the consultant's consultant. You might tell on us about what that's about. I remember seeing a podcast episode where you had mentioned this is like what you talk about when you're at the golf course, like just to see if people are interested in learning more. Yeah, I, well, I mean, obviously we're on a podcast.
So I have to assume you're interested. But yeah, most of the time when people ask you what you do, especially on the golf course, they don't care. And you don't want someone talking your ear off. So I just say I'm on the consultant's consultant, you know, like a like a bullshitter's bullshitter. And it's enough for a laugh. And then, you know, walking down the fairway if if somebody's a consultant or they're interested, sure, we can have a conversation.
But don't talk people's ear off. But yeah, if, yeah, I consult with consultants, generally ones that work at agencies, I came from agency world marketing agency world. And I fell in love with the side of the business that sells knowledge and experience. And that's called consulting or strategy or advisory or planning. All that stuff played by a completely different set of rules. And people treated me like a big boy circa 23 years old. So I
was, you know, I was happy to be treated like an adult when I was doing those things. And then at the same time, writing content or building websites or doing anything, delivery related, I was treated like a child. And I was not invited to the, to the, the big kid table, which I imagine that probably helps to inform even your approach on how you consult with the consultants that you work with too, right? In the, that's like, if you want to make
an impact, most people are out there. They want to make an impact. That's why we get into this stuff. There's other ways to make a lot more money. So if you want to make an impact, it's really hard to make an impact when you don't have access to decision makers. When you can't get into the minds or sit at the table of the people that are responsible for the future of the business. And if you are perceived as a vendor, if you are perceived
as somebody selling something, it's conflict of interest. You can't be invited to that decision maker table because every nine times out of 10, you're going to say, Oh, I have an idea. Why don't we spend more money on marketing? Great. Thanks, Max. See you never. So you have to be as a marketer. If you want stronger relationships with your clients,
you have to cease to be a marketer. And you have to first identify as a business owner or a strategist or an indispensable partner as a mentor of mine and Steve Lashanski would say. And you just so happen to be able to do some marketing things or have a lot of experience in that area. But you have to be able to speak business. And you have to be able to understand and have full conversations about what they care about. And you may never say the word
marketing. It may have nothing to do with you. And that is the difference between a consultant or a partner or a strategist and a vendor. Well, and you told me about this. I know you didn't coin the term, but vendorification. Would you mind? I mean, you kind of essentially touched on it a little bit, but would you mind unpacking that a little bit more like what exactly is this vendorification? And why is it something that you think digital agency owners need to be aware of?
Well, so when I when I started to do more strategy work, I was still young, 23, 24 running a small like 10 person agency very early on in the relationship when we were doing strategy, they would introduce me. The client would introduce me to the rest of their team. This is Max. He's helping us with our marketing strategy and everyone. Everyone sits up and goes, this young guy, he must know a lot of things. Later in the relationship when we're designing
websites that this is Max. So he's helping us build our website. He's the website guy. That's weird. And then we're writing content. Oh, this is this is Max. He's writing our, he's writing our LinkedIn posts. And so I would, I would just be marginalized again and again based on what we were doing. So you're identified by what you say yes to even the emails that you answer. And so being vendorified is something I wanted to talk about in my book.
And I looked it up and sure enough, it's in the urban dictionary. And it says for the, when, when the client reduces the relationship to that of a vendor in a relationship status, a vendor is, is far lower than that of a strategic partner. So to be vendorified is when you're no longer invited to the table, you're no longer the CEO or the leadership team, no longer attends your calls, you're generally, you know, passed off to someone lower on the
management team. But it is, it is, it is marginalizing your relationship and you will no longer have influence or control over the decisions in that relationship. That's, that's what being a vendor is. They are purchasing things from you. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting I mean, the way that you frame it that it's sometimes it's a thing that happens gradually. So it's not even just like you've only ever been a vendor in their eyes, like sometimes
you come in as a strategic partner. And then as time goes on, like you said, the more you say yes to the specific things you're saying yes to, there can be this eventual progression towards now, you were just a vendor in your experience, just like not only from your own personal experience, but also just in consulting with different digital agencies, like what are, I guess, what are some ways that you advise to kind of shore that up to keep from that eventual decline and to just
vendor status? Yeah. So actually in David Baker's business of expertise, he talks about like five or six different areas, things like your job title. Does it say content writer? Does it say website developer or does it say strategic partner to my clients or whatever it is? So your title, the titles of the people at your client organizations that you work with, the words next to the dollar
signs. A lot of people will will fancy their work as strategic and they'll talk strategy, strategy strategy, you go to the last page of the proposal with the dollar signs and the word next to that is website or content or ad management or all of these commodity services that can be
easily replaced. And then like the funniest story when you know this was really implanted in my brain, I had a business partner while I'm running these low profit content website, all the traditional marketing services, my business partner is in the other room doing a $5,000 retainer and he gets on the phone once a week with the leadership team for 15 minutes. And when he would get emails, he had a fake email alias. I forget the name of this fake person, but anytime he got an
email about something tactical, when's this blog coming out? Why is the shade of purple on the website? You know weird. He would he would forward it to the fake email address, log into the fake email address and say like, oh, I'm tagging in our specialist to answer that question. So he knew that if he answered that question, then he's sort of inviting more of that behavior. Like yeah, when you have a tactical problem, you email me. He knew that would be detrimental to the relationship.
He knew they would no longer invite him to that table. So he had a completely separate personality and that's what we need to think about. We need to think about our role as a strategic partner and the separation of that role from other roles that are responsible for tactical things. And I think a mistake that people make is they try and combine those two things. One day on Monday, you're talking strategy, then on Wednesday, you're talking tactics. That's slowly going to deteriorate
your status as a strategic partner. That is really, really fascinating. I suppose like in in your friend's example, you know, maybe he had other employees or other contractors who was working with. But I suppose for like solo partners, like people who are somewhat more solo in their practice or they don't have a very large team. The first that that's probably coming to
their mind is like, well, I don't have somebody I can pass it off to. But even the example you gave, like you could have another alias email address that it could be coming from just in again, get that appearance. Well, look, Max, what do you what do you think of this piece of content? Like I'm pretty good at content. Like I know that. But if I if I give them advice on content, then I'm the content guy. So what do I say? I go, look, I've been out of the content game for like
10 years. But I know a few people that I'm sure would be happy to review this. Do you want me to make an introduction? So maybe if I can if I can poke back or maybe devil's advocate here, because I can I can almost hear the questions coming back from a conversation that I've already had with my my clients and what also with other prospects, I speak with is, you know, never one. There's been lots of of discussion about heading into a recession or like as we all know, 2023
was really hard, especially for digital agencies. And I think in times when when work starts to slow down, we can feel this need to be able to point to more tactical value ads, right? Where like sometimes strategy or strategic work can feel like a nice to have where tactical feels more like a must have. So like what what do you say back to somebody who is feeling that like, I don't know that I can get out of tactics because tactics feel a lot more secure and stable in a down economy
than strategy. Well, and people are out there buying tactics. So the the thing about strategy that really that really hurts people is that you actually have to sell it. Most agencies that I meet have never sold anything in their lives. They have merely participated in a buying process. There is a there is a market there are there is a there is a pool of people out there buying
marketing tactics. Yeah. And so yes, it's easier to to get in line and put your card in the air and go, I'll do it for cheaper or we're we have a better culture or soda machine or whatever. You're bidding on these things. That's not selling. Yeah. And so unless you've gotten really good at developing genuine relationships, credibility in the marketplace, you're on podcasts next to you know, smart people unless you've been doing that for a long time, you find yourself in a down
economy. Yeah, you you basically have no choice but to to go tactics first. And it's not impossible to go from tactical to strategic. It's just like a thousand times harder. So especially when you don't have that confidence of like, you know, here's a $10,000 check that I got for creating a plan. So if you haven't done it, it's it's you know, it's really tough. But a way to get started is just to start selling that plan first. They may not say
yes, but you'll get used to it. And as soon as you start talking about and describing the value of a plan and going, Hey, you know, that's that's a really important result that you want. Wouldn't you agree that like we should probably create a plan first or or do you or you just want to go for it and just sort of wing it? Yeah, I want to create a plan. And so rather than signing up for something that we have no idea like what we're going to do, why don't why don't we just do a short engagement
to do the plan? Oh, and that'll that'll create a lot more clarity for the project because I'm just concerned if you sign up for $10,000 a month for six months, we create plan and all of a sudden, you only need to pay me five and it's really not as as much as we thought or or a better, there's another vendor, you know, that would be better. And I can help you evaluate that vendor. The logic behind it is there, but we take that first marshmallow when we're afraid and hungry.
You know, the marshmallow test with the kids. Yeah, we're all just kids with marshmallows. I mean, I might not be super familiar with that, but I'm not the two marshmallows. You put the you put the marshmallow in front of the kid and you say, hey, if you wait, you can get a second marshmallow and most of the kids take the marshmallow. That's great. But I think that's a really good,
a good call out. And even just think about the the selling process. It's like most of the time in the buyer's eyes, a shorter term, a lower risk engagement, i.e. a project-based engagement is going to be an easier sell than, hey, why don't you sign on for 12 months at, you know, $5,000 a month when you still don't really fully know if this is going to be the right
value proposition? I mean, project, project can be helpful. And that's the recipe. Like we'll talk about, you know, my philosophy on simplifying your service offering or productizing if we want to use a big word for it. But it invites a complete loss of control in in the client agency relationship. So you got these people that are signing on, you know, these big long term retainers, they do their specialty for like a month. And then the clients like, well, well, we got you for a
year and we're paying you we're paying you $10,000 a month. So now you're going to do X, Y, and Z that you have no experience in. And then you're going to have to go higher somebody, you know, and make an investment that's never you're never going to get that investment back. So it just sort of broadens the value proposition. It deteriorates your focus and your expertise. And if you're not getting paid for a plan, then that's going to happen. So, you know, I think it's
I think it's all related. But it starts with most agencies not truly marketing themselves. And generating their own pipeline. This is very hard to do when you're responding to an RFP. The RFP says we want a website. You can't go, hey, I have an idea because someone was an idiot and didn't think like, why don't you like create a plan first? You know, that's not your fault, but you're not going to get the deal. Because someone's going, I have an RFP, I'm trying to buy a website. You
can't say, what would you like to buy a plan? No, take a hike. You're going to lose the deal. So if you're surviving off of RFPs, if you're, if you're, you know, if you've done the inbound thing and you're getting people reaching out to you because they clicked the, you know, website evaluation thing on your website, yeah, you're not going to be able to talk strategy. You're not going to get a seat at that table. You're not going to talk to the CSO or the technology people
or the ops folks. You're never going to get in that room. They don't care about the website. Okay. So, you know, it's all, it's all related. Well, Max, you had said a couple things that I really resonated with me. And I think, um, I think one of the things that really stood out in what you had said with the, the sales aspect is for being honest, most digital agencies haven't sold the day in their lives. But the problem is, is many of them perceive that they have because they
have all this call it referral business. People coming to them because, you know, they've got a friend who thinks they understand what you do. You do websites. It's like, well, no, I mean, I do SEO. People don't really know what SEO is or maybe somebody is like, oh, you, you develop apps. It's like, well, no, I'm a product experience designer, but okay, sure. Yeah, whatever. And then
before you know what, you're doing like everything and anything. And again, you think to yourself, I know sales, but to your point, it's like, there's not necessarily like an outbound motion to what you're doing. You're not going towards people because you don't really even know who your ideal client is per se. I think that's an interesting take. Well, if you're, if you're giving them what they're asking for, that's not sales. That's, that's the service industry. You know, that's, that's being
a waiter at a restaurant and then saying, I want it, I want it well done. And you go and, yeah, perfect. That sounds great. Right. So, you know, Steve Lashanski, who's written a ton of great books, you know, this is another thing that he talks about, but he nine percent of the time, the first thing they ask for is not the thing that is most important or most beneficial to their business. I want a website. Are you sure what do you really want? Well, we're looking for more customers. What kind
of more customers? What's that going to do? What's your exit plan? What, you know, what are all these things? There's so many more important things that are behind the scenes. So if you don't dig that deep and get to the thing that's most important and say, here's why I think we should start there and here's why I'm the right person to do that for you. That's selling. So I think it face value. If you're, if you're, if you're just giving them what they're asking for, you're missing
it, you're missing the opportunity. Yeah. And it makes me wonder, I mean, what you even just said right there in order to have those types of conversations, there is a true discovery call that's happening where you're asking questions to draw out kind of the root cause or like the five wise, if you will, like just drill into, okay, this is what you're asking for, but why, but why? But why? Yes. Ask why, right? Exactly. And if they're like, shut up, kid, just give me the website.
Okay. See ya. Well, exactly. But we don't because nobody builds the pipeline. And so every opportunity is like, I need to close this. Yes. I will be your, I will deliver this sorry client. Please don't fire me. There's even a little drawing of my in, in the book where the client has a little dollar and it's like, you know, jump vendor jump. That's really, you know, that's really the way it feels. If you don't consistently build relationships with your ideal clients. And what I
mean by a relationship is like, have you ever had a conversation with the ideal, ideal client? And you say, well, what is really important to you this quarter? And they go, well, the most important thing is we're installing new toilets. And you go, man, that is so cool. Can I introduce you to somebody that's an expert at, you know, installing some new toilets? Like you have to be willing to just be a person and be willing to bring value to these people and listen to what's important to
them, maybe introduce them to some people. But admit that what they're focused on right now has nothing to do with you. Yeah. That's right. That's that's those are the relationships that you need to build and reinforce what you do on on LinkedIn or, you know, invite them to events that you're doing so that when they do decide that in my case, productizing or, you know, whatever it is
like and do for them is a priority. Then I'm the first person they call. That's right. Yeah. And if we're honest like that's probably the majority of the people who you're going to, I mean, statistically, that's the majority of the people you're going to encounter at first is people who, at some point, will want to buy from you or could want to buy from you. But right now, they're not in that space. Yeah. That's the that's the majority. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Well, you touched on it already. You mentioned the word productizing your services. In the process of productizing services, like what are the main steps that an agency should be taking to move away from custom service model to a more repeatable and scalable product? Yeah. I mean, look, if you have a service menu, it ain't going to happen. Just go to your website, hover over services. If there's a menu, you're screwed. Hmm. You're screwed. McDonald's did its thing because they had
a cheeseburger. Like this, we do cheeseburgers. You know, then they took over the world and now they got all sorts of stuff. But the services menu, just like a restaurant, it is a sacrifice, you sacrifice control. What would you like today, client? And David Baker talks a lot about this. You have to you have to bring every client in the same door. So, you know, there's two things going
on in my life. One is the strategy argument. Only let them in the strategy door. And two is the productize argument in that your strategy works should follow the same process every time. And generally, it's it doesn't. But yeah, if you're going to like by productizing, I just mean you talk about it the same. You sell it the same and you deliver it the same. And if you're letting clients choose what door they enter, you can't do that. It is astronomically more more complex.
Another symptom is you've got different clients buying different services. This one client does SEO, this other client does SEO and PPC, this other client's doing all these other acronyms, whatever people are using today to describe basic marketing. But you have to have every client going through a singular services process. And if you do five things, then you put them in chronological order and you say we start with A, then we do B, then we do C, then we do D. That is the key to
operational efficiency. But yes, it requires that you get out there and you find the certain types of clients that will get most value out of that singular services process. Yeah. So, when you say the menu, if you have a menu, you're already screwed. Are you saying that if you have multiple ways to address the same need, then you're screwed? Are you saying like to have your productized services like menu attized, if you will? Are you saying that that's the issue? The issue is a lack
of control. So if you do five things, if you got five things on your menu, but you say every client that we work with is going to do this one first, then this, then this, then this, then you're fine. That's a singular services process. That's going to create consistency across all your clients. So I don't care if you have five practice areas. That's fine. But stop letting clients start with number six and then they'll go number three and then they'll go I'll have a number one. You can't
sit and meet expectations. You get trained people to improvise. That is almost impossible to train people to improvise because you need experience and confidence and you're still going to screw it up a lot and employees are terrified of screwing up. So you got to give them a singular services process and it is the burden of the seller or the strategist if you're being paid to create plan to ensure that the expectation on the client side is that yes, we're going to go with your
recommendation because you are the expert. That's why we're paying you. Yeah, and I think the idea of like you said not letting people choose their own adventure or choose their own kind of pathway. Do you let people just oh, I'll start off with Tactical and then eventually I'll get to strategy. It's like if you have like a flow that you want to take your clients through and that always needs to start with that one project or that one kind of like strategy engagement, that's a really
helpful perspective. And you would say that that's like necessary. It's pretty foundational in order to successfully productize your service. Oh yeah, and productize is just a big word for like doing a good job. Yeah, there's steps. There's some spreadsheet somewhere that says here's all the steps we go through. You know, and here's how long it takes. Then there's you know, then there's a treasure chest of reusable templates so that you're setting expectations every time
you're talking about it the same way you're delivering the same value. If you have a lack of documentation and things are going differently every time then yeah, it's not productize. But it's a you know, it's a fluid word you're never done. There's always more detail that you could give it, but the degree to which you can consistently deliver value on you know, in a certain amount of time and manage costs. I mean yeah, your service starts to look like a product on the books.
It takes the same amount of money to make a Nike Nike shoe every time. But yet services companies have zero clue about you know, exactly how much work it's going to take from client client. But if all the clients look the same and go through the same process, it's far more controllable. Yeah, I think that's so so good. You touched on this a little bit, but I want to dive in further here.
The unique challenges in pricing consulting services. Would you mind elaborating a little bit more on how digital agencies should determine the right price for the consulting services and adjust based on client feedback? Yeah, content, websites and anything that people are buying is subject to competitive pricing and people will say, oh, it's value based, but it's not true when you can be
replaced. Like I don't care that that blog article made you a million dollars. I can't charge you a million dollars for a blog article because to me, the writer next door is going to is going to do the same thing for 10 bucks and if a client perceives that they're getting the same value, they will replace you and the keyword is perceives. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. If they perceive that AI can create 30 million articles for them and they're currently paying me $500 article, I'm out.
So strategic services have no rules basically. I mean, I remember a guy coming into our agency and I wanted to learn more about strategy and he showed me this deck. It was like 200 slides or something and it was a $1.5 million project and I was looking at this slide deck going, this is absolute trash. It was trash. I was like 23 and I know it was trash. I had like 10,000 recommendations. It's like none of this is actually going to happen. $1.5 million and I realized that it is a complete game.
It's not value based. It's perceived value based, which is completely fluid. So the reality is people undercharge. They undercharge because clients are saying yes. And so in with consulting services, the price is never right. It's either too high or too low. And if you're getting a yes, it means you left money on the table. No is the start. No is the start of getting paid what you're worth. If you're not getting nose and then you lean in and go, well, how are you thinking about it?
Is it that there's budget elsewhere? Is it the fee structure? Is it the payment terms? Is it you don't see the value in it? I've gotten a no to a $20,000 project and they were ready to walk and I was like, what does it need to look like for you? And they were like, well, honestly, we just don't have 20 grand right now. I mean, we could do 10 now and 10 in 30 days. And I'm like, hold, hold, please. Let me check with my, let me check with my finance team. Yeah,
you know, I think we could do that. So you know what I mean? And I was previously, I was previously charging 15. So the reality is if you're getting, if you get a yes, double the price. If you get a no, get four more knows at that price point and then split the difference. Your charge in 10 today, charge 20 tomorrow because that conversation, once they say no to 20, that conversation may end up with, okay, well, here's what we can do. You've got a three step
process. Let's easy math. It's early for me. You've got a four step process. It's $20,000. You were previously charging 15. They don't have $20,000. You know what we could do? We could do the first step in the process for $5,000. That is not a discount. That is favorable payment terms. That's allowing them to take object one and say, well, I can only pay for that now. A couple of months later, I may pay for piece two and piece three. So you have not sacrificed
the integrity of your process. Everyone is still going A, B, C, D. You have also not given a discount, which completely eliminates all control and respect. But like my dad always said, make it, don't make it difficult for people to work with you. So my favorite thing to do is get a no and say, well, there's clearly value here. And I know this is a focus for you. So what does it need to look like for you? I love that. Yeah. And on the topic of value pricing, like you said, it's not value
pricing. It's perceived value, perceived value pricing. And perception can be wildly different, you know, depending on a depending on the buyer even. Just their personality, right? Nothing to do with like how valuable it actually is. A lot of it is just personality. And so my favorite thing to do is get price out of the way as early as possible because it gets so awkward the longer you go because you've spent more and more time with people that you're afraid saying it costs
$30,000. It's like, you know, it's like embarrassing because now you've wasted all this time because they don't have 30 grand. So I like to just accidentally spit it out early in conversations. And you always see them like you just be naturally talking they'll they'll look down and they'll take a little note. They'll write it down because they want to know. And don't give me this. Oh, it depends.
If somebody asks you how much it costs, please spit out a number. Don't don't do this. Well, we have to strap you to a jet engine and fly around the world five times before before we know how much it's going to cost. You know, give them a range. Just be like answer the question. Mm-hmm. Stop being so scared of the number. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And specifically, this is this is also really applicable for advisory or some type of like consulting type of engagement, right?
Is what we're talking about. We're not necessarily talking about like tactical work here. Although tactical, it's it so I mean tactical is wildly variable. You know, that's the that's the problem. You know, the what somebody actually needs to be successful is going to vary from client client, but the idea that it costs $10,000 to figure out exactly what you need. And it's going to be two weeks and we're going to do three calls. And I'm going to talk to these people. And that's the
same way every time. So yeah, my best clients pay me $10,000 to create a plan. That's step one. What more do you need to know? Hmm. So Max, I know that you your background is more marketing agency. And then also you worked you work a lot with more of the on the marketing side. But you also work with other digital agencies as well as a as a consultant. My audience a lot of my audience is more software development agencies. So still in the agency space, but a little bit more
technical. Some unique challenges in that space. And something that I think I hear a lot of when we talk about value pricing, we just talk about just different types of engagements is there's there's a large resistance to something that's fixed to some type of price that's fixed because of the nature of developing software is it's a very iterative thing. Most dev shops are are going to go
with some type of flexible arrangement. Now given what you and it's slightly creative, right? Like I would imagine if I was developing software, the clients always going to be like, well, what if it yes, what if it magically disappeared? If somebody like turns their head and they're like, well, I guess, okay, maybe then now like the budget's blown. Yeah. So there's probably wildly creative
and subjective. Yes. And it flexes throughout the engagement and all that kind of stuff. But given the categories that you have established, you know, tactical work versus strategic work, I'd say, based on those definitions, you know, even the development of the software itself is probably more in the tactical bucket. What would be an example of like the strategic type of work that you might consult with a software development agency to try to bring to market for? Yeah, I mean,
here, this is this will be a really fun game. You name a service that's tactical and I'll make it strategic. Okay, go. So I am engaged to develop an application for a pre-sea or, you know, just got a series A funding. Great, great, great, great. Here's the strategic version of that. Yeah, an application roadmap, word map strategy and word map, roadmap strategy plan. Take anything tactical. You add one of those words at the beginning or the end and it's magically strategic.
Before you do anything, you have to create a plan. So if it's software, a product roadmap, right? And the process for creating a product roadmap is controllable, standardized. There's a conversation that happens. Then you draw something on a sheet of paper. You limit it to four iterations that the plan is always over a six-month time period. You can control all those elements when the first thing you sell is a product roadmap and shouldn't we create the product roadmap before
we start building the thing? Isn't that, isn't that like important? And by the way, you know, this is on a spectrum, right? And Timmy's tweet is on the all the way tactical side. The exit plan for the business owners is all the way on the strategic side. So before the product roadmap came like some research maybe on what consumers want. So consumer research, hey, before we create a product roadmap for you, have you guys done any consumer research? That's good. Okay, well, maybe we should
do that. And you know what, if that's not your thing, bring in a partner that does consumer research because you're going to get a piece of that pie. Yeah. Client's going to think you're awesome. Yeah. And that consumer research company is going to give you business in return because that's what people do when you land deals in their lab. So, and that's that, those are those questions, right? Oh, so you're making a product. You're about to spend a million dollars on this
product. You must be pretty darn sure of what people want. You must be pretty darn sure of the business model you're going after. Your investors must have some pretty solid expectations. Why don't we do a workshop to align the product with the investor's expectations? We call it a financial alignment. Wow. Roadmap strategy. Yeah, roadmaps. One of the, you know, it's all planned strategy, road map plan. It's all planned. Yeah. And so that's my message is sell the plan
first and everything that you're doing. Like you do do the plan first. You're just not charging for it. Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. Actually builds an application without creating a plan. That's right. Yeah. And you know, obviously some of the pushback again, I'm hearing, I'm hearing the voices in my head. They're like, yeah, but we can't know like we're not going to do the waterfalls. Yeah, the voices were strong. They're definitely like we're not. We're not
going to walk away talking about Tony. Yeah, I get the sky out of here. But I'd argue I'd argue that, you know, even even with as much we're not going to do waterfall when we're talking about, you know, a project plan or a road map or whatever for this software, it's still possible to create a road map without it being a full-blown waterfall project road map. Like you can still have a road map. I don't even know what waterfall is. That's a new one though. That's a new one for me. What does that
mean? Yeah, so waterfall is a methodology of project management. And it's often times the bane of the existence of a software developer because they're like, gaw, like we can't know exactly what's your technical. Yeah. So your waterfall thing, I would say, is on the technical plan side, which is wildly variable. But you know, a strategic plan is not a tire level.
There's a you have to standardize the level of complexity or detail. Right. And so if you're creating a plan that a software developer is going to be looking at that plan and actually building something, that's going to be on the tactical side. That's going to be variable based on, you know, what you're building. But to figure out what you should be building at a high level,
that can be standardized. Yeah. And to give more further distinctions again, from conversations I've had with some of my people, even a design sprint or like a design plan is still probably a little bit more in the tactical realm. And what we're talking about here, what Max is talking about here is more even a higher level up from even a design sprint for designing an application. Yeah, well, you'd have to be a designer to create a design sprint. You'd have to be a software
developer to create a water fall thing. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Here's a good test. If I don't know what the heck you're talking about, it's probably tactical. Right. Because you know why? This is all about relationships with the leadership team. If they don't know what you're talking about, then it's not strategic. As soon as you start saying water fall thing, they're just like, cool, you need to talk to my buddy Tony over here. It was going to be in charge of this technical
project when it starts making money come talk to me about the money. So the strategic plan doesn't have tiki-taki buttons anywhere. It's just like how much money are we going to make? How are we going to make it? Who are we going to sell it to? That's a leadership conversation. Yeah. So so good. Max, in our call previously, you had mentioned to me about selling consulting
services maybe even as a loss leader. Would you mind elaborating a little bit more about when is it appropriate to use consulting as a loss leader and how agencies can strategically implement the approach without devaluing service? Yeah. Like there's so here's two different experiences. But the answer is look the economy changes. Your life is going to change. You got to be human being. You got to feed your kids. Right. So on one hand, I'm working with an agency and I go and
I interview their client because they tried to pitch them a $20,000 strategy project. They're literally asking for it. They're like, yeah, we'd love to do more strategy work with you. That's why I was hired. So I interviewed them and I was like, well, they pitched you a $20,000 strategy project and you guys said, no, and they're like, oh, well, we thought it couldn't possibly be valuable for $20,000. We don't we thought it was going to be like at least 100 or 120. So we just went
and worked with a consulting firm. You know what I mean? Like I'm not going to buy a pair of shoes that cost 50 cents. So what it costs to different people is going to impact that perceived value. So if you price too low, the perceived value as well, this is really low. And even if they do buy it, you're probably not going to get the attention of the leadership team. They might show up once, but they're under no obligation to take your advice. Oh, well, we only paid, you know,
eight bucks for it. We could just toss it out. Who cares? Yeah. But if you pay $50,000 for somebody to tell you what to do, people are probably going to give it a shot. Now on the other hand, so I walked around with that philosophy, you know, for a while. On the other hand, there's some industries like I was doing this for an IT company. And for some reason, IT functions like, you know, really weird. It was like really very technical, you know, people. So
they're not a big fan of strategy work or whatever. So we realized that the accounts would double or triple if we could do this workshop with their leadership team. And so we went out. We did like a survey of all the biotech firms and we call the leadership team. They're like, hey, we have like a lot of information about what biotech firms are buying and not buying. They're like, oh, we would love that information. Great. Let's do a workshop. And I don't know. It is like $5,000.
Okay. I don't want to make a big deal. I don't want to have to go through procurement. Oh, yeah, 5K. I could put that on my credit card. You do that workshop and all the sudden that account doubles, triples. And so on one hand, you can use consulting as the revenue stream. And it is a revenue stream, right? But if your organization is set up for volume services and your plan is to grow your services, yeah, you want them to pay attention. You want a price point that pays
attention. And generally, an organization will have some number where an executive can buy from you with single signature authority. It's generally under $10,000. It's $12,000. You got to go through procurement. We got to call bill and Susan and Terry and everyone's got to get into a room and agree. Now, hey, I'd like to do a workshop with your leadership team to make sure we're aligned with strategically what you people are doing. What do you say, like $7,500 with that turn
any hits? No, I could put that on my credit card today. So it's about your business model. And it's about what you want to achieve. And it's revenue or profitability because the strategy
work is going to be the most profitable thing you do. But if your business model is to grow volume and revenue and headcount, and that's what the board wants, then yeah, you can use it as a loss leader because you know that if you can get in there and run some process that's been shown to double the amount of business people are doing with you, yeah, you might even do it for free. As long as you can creatively get executives to pay attention, which is difficult when you're
not charging for it. Yeah, that's a, and I suppose it's a real fine needle to thread there too. Because like you said, you don't want it to be so cheap that they just can be like, it's basically $8. It's essentially worthless advice. But you also want it to be cheap enough where they can just put it on their their credit card and not have to worry about procurement. Yeah. And you can't
be perceived as giving them a discount or looking weak. I think I'm like 99% sure this was David Baker, but in his book he talks about, I think it is his recent book, it's either full price or free. No, never discount, never negotiate to their full price or it's free. I like that. Can you you you would stand by that? You think that that's a good that's a good good idea. That's what I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To their full price or it's free. You don't run
cromos. You're not just like, Hey, we're giving $1,000 off on this engagement. Oh God. I mean, have you could you imagine like, like, could you imagine like a high a highly paid consultant on LinkedIn sending out coupons running a promo? Hey, you know, for the month of July, my, you know, my hands on services 50% off. It's like, what? Just go on a group on. Get yourself a nice, nice discount for max trailer. Yeah. No, I don't I've yeah, I don't think that's a reality thing
that that's happening that's happening out there. Not so much. Certainly not for consulting, not for anything that's advisor. Yeah. Well, because then it's like, wait, if you can do it for 50% off, now you're just opening the doors to like, Hey, I know you'll do it for 50% off. So you're never going to get full price again. Yeah. That's really good. It's true.
It's true. Well, in that last little blurb, you had mentioned something about, it really depends on what you want out of your agency, you know, and when you're thinking about like whether or not to do loss leader or all this kind of stuff. But something that I've appreciated about some of the other as you had other speaking engagements, something you've talked about is like building a business around your personal life and not letting this kind of suck the life out of you.
What would be some practical steps that agency owners can take to ensure their business supports their personal goals and their wellbeing? Well, plan your personal life. That's the thing that look, you got these successful business owners. And if you're successful in business, it's because you know how to plan and you hold yourself accountable and you get it done. But they don't plan their personal life first. They plan their business and they sacrifice their personal life. They
have any bit of energy left. So my, my policy is to plan my personal life first. That means when I sit down to do an annual plan, what do I want out of my personal life? Well, I want to, I want to spend, I want to spend 30 days playing golf every single day. Two years ago, we took, we took the third month off all year. So we worked for three months, then took a month off, worked for three months, took a month off. And then we thought about the business model and what we needed to do to make
that happen. That's when we started doing the three month quarterly engagements. So we'd have a three month engagement with three clients. We'd take a month off and we'd come back. So, you know, you plan your personal life first and then you think about the business model to support that. So, yeah, just, you got to sit down and like create a plan for your personal life. And none of this, you know, and people are generally screwed because the plan for their personal life amounts to
however many weekends you get. Right. So someone, some time came along and said, we're going to work five days a week, 10 hours a day or whatever. And if you don't, you're going to be shunned because you're lazy and whatever. The whole hustle culture thing. And so like that, that just puts barriers that bring you brings you back to normal life sacrifice for business. Figure out what you want to do. You want to spend four days with your kids every week and work three days. Great. We can create a
business model around that. But nobody does that because they're indoctrinated in, you know, the corporate world of sacrifice, which most of them had to do a lifetime of to develop the skills to go on their own as a consultant or run their company. For a business owner, if you've got employees, you know, and you're not a solo consultant and you've got responsibilities and, you know, it comes
down to productizing. It comes down to removing yourself from the business and, you know, stopping this whole like I'm the only one that can do sales or I'm the only one that can do service. Yeah. It's difficult. It's probably a new muscle for you to like write down what you're actually doing and find somebody capable of doing it on your behalf, but it has to be done. So go take an hour and plan your personal life over the next three months and plan it. Like you said, plan it first.
And then after you've planned your personal life, then you lay it on what you want from the business. And I imagine that's probably a lot more doable for somebody who is the sole owner of the business. And then when you'd start dealing with partners, it could probably be like, there might be like a little bit of a rub there, you know, because maybe one partner has a different expectation for what the personal life looks like versus relationships are difficult. What's new?
And forget about like having like two or three partners. I'm pretty sure that's why it's illegal in every state, but you know, you talk. It's just people go crazy. It just wouldn't work. Yeah. But yeah, like that's difficult if you've got partners. You actually need to align culturally. What are our values as a partnership? That's right. That's why my partnership works. Because when she's like, yeah, I'm going to go spend a month in Mexico and turn my phone off. I'm like,
that is freaking awesome. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go plan something too. You've you've inspired me. And I'm going to go like, well, what are we going to do? It's like, great. Let's plan a business model around you taking off because like that's what life is about. And I'd only be able to work with somebody that shared that, you know, value. Yep. Amen to that. Amen to that. Well, Max, this has been incredibly insightful. We talk a lot
about productizing services. We talked about vendorification. There's been a lot. I feel like I'm going to look back on our on our episode and maybe I'll have to write a book or some. I mean, unless somebody else has already written a book about this stuff. I got I got a few and I'm working on one more. I got I got the all on my LinkedIn profile. I got the black book, the agency survival guide. I got the yellow book, the consultant survival guide. And I'm working on and working on
a new edition of agency survival guide life after inbound. Because I don't know if you've noticed, but like nobody trusts content anymore because of AI. Oh yeah. Unless it's content like this where you can tell that like I'm an actual human being. You're an actual human being like this is the this is the I think like the last frontier of content is like unless max. This is just a very compelling AI video of both of our personas. Like right. It's just a simulation. It's just
it's all a simulation. We don't actually exist. Right. Enjoy it. Yes. But life after inbound is that is that due to to release sometime this year or when you when you're going to launch it? Oh, probably not. No, I got a lot of I got a lot of interviews. I have so much fun writing the book because I don't actually write the book. I just talk to people that are smart and they essentially write it for me. It's great. I'm more of like a an editor. Editor of the stories.
And I draw opinionated pictures like drawing. Oh, you actually draw. I really want to draw. But there's a lot of that it's easier to get to the 100 page minimum that's required by Amazon if you have like drawings and blank pages where notes go. Gaming the system right there. Well, you guys like you know in high school you had to do the period trick where you double space after the period because the you know the professor has to be five pages. What's technically five pages.
Yeah, well what font are we working with? So I guess maybe on the topic of the book, is there anything I'm looking for for you know conversations to be had contributors to that? I'd love to talk to people that are actually changing their services. Like what works in marketing? If you're like if you're holding on to the same like formula or narrative that you've been doing
for the last 10 years, we probably got nothing to talk about. But if you've you know if you have a habit of looking at what's working in the marketplace and then changing like your approach to helping clients, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. And the main thing I'm seeing is I think we're finally at the end of this whole create content and they will come narrative where you know all these all these fresh college grads were employed in these content mills in these copy shop.
Copy shops. I'm always I was accidentally say coffee shops. I mean to say copy shops. And then you know now AI is finally driven the price of content to zero. Again it doesn't matter if the content is going to work or is good or not. Everybody is arguing about that. I'm like that that is irrelevant. There is enough people that think it's going to work and so you're out and the price goes to zero because you know who has much bigger voices than service companies, software companies.
That's true. Yeah. So the tech overlord they're dominating the narrative. Yeah. It's not as good. Sorry. You know we have to try it. We feel differently about it. So I guess then the ask then for people who are listening to this podcast is if you are currently exploring new ways of doing marketing, maybe have a conversation with Max. Yeah. I might want to put your face in my book. Would this face be you're going to draw their face or? I haven't decided. I think it depends on the
face. Okay. That's sort of a limited skill set. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I would I would pay just to see those those sketches that you would draw in the book if you did that. That's that's a new idea. That that might be that might be monetized. That could be fun. It could be it could be good. Well, Max, as always, I appreciate our conversations. It's always so insightful
and I'm sure our listeners have gotten a lot out of this. If they wanted to follow along with what you're up to, if they wanted to connect with you, LinkedIn, Max trailer, the purple sort of gets faded out, but TRAY, LOR, very easy to find on LinkedIn. I have strong opinions. I generally mean what I say, but I can't be sarcastic. Give me a break. Yeah. Right. You also do a lot of really great podcasts like short form video content with different agency owners as well.
Yeah. My podcast beers with Max have been doing that for nine years. Yeah. I mean, the best way to get to people is one and two minute snippets from my full interviews. So I'm pretty convinced nobody watches my full interviews because whatever. But yeah, there's there's some opinionated rants and I try to post on LinkedIn pretty regularly. So if anybody's interested, go follow Max on LinkedIn. Max is there another good way for people to connect with
you? Is it just through LinkedIn? Is that the best way? No, it's just LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Cool. Awesome. My website's never as good as LinkedIn. I have to like pay someone to push buttons on my website. LinkedIn. I could just go in and I can you know, click edit and do all the things. You know, it's actually on my it's actually Max trailer behind the scenes in LinkedIn. Yeah, it's actually me. Like I I and if I reach out and say like, how did you find me? That's
actually me writing that. Crazy. That's good. I build relationships. So so so wild. Well, Max, again, I really thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us and yeah, I'm looking for it. I feel like we have so much more to talk about. I'll have to have you back on for another episode. Always always if you see me spitting some topics that were not covered on the LinkedIn,
see let me know. I will indeed. I will indeed. And thank you to our listeners. If you found value out of our podcasts today, please share it with your friends and subscribe for future episodes. Also, don't forget to leave us a review because it helps other people find us and hear inspiring stories like the one we heard today. If you are the founder of the software development agency or you know somebody who is and you'd like to share something exciting that you're up to
with our audience, drop me a line at Tony at Equip.com. That's ACCQIP.com.